A Flurry Of Snow
by TriplePivotTurn
Summary: A collection of Jack centric drabbles from before and after the movie. Quick explorations of various themes and ideas. Some funny, some serious, some sad and some strange. May or may not be various shipping at this stage no shipping. I take requests, prompts, ideas as well.
1. How They Talk

Maaan have I been outta the game. Sorry to all the peeps who may or may not still be following me from my days as a YGO writer, but look something new and exciting! I'm just gonna post up any rotg drabbles in here, just explorin' some ideas.

Please note also I have no beta reader currently and I only just wrote this, if someone wants to volunteer to beta I can only say "oh gods yes". I waaaants one.

Anywho I hope you like this little drabble

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**_How They Talk  
_**_**or**__: Communication between a not-a-boy and the wind_

He needed his staff to hear the wind, for the wind to hear him. Without his staff he could hear the faintest of whispers, curling against the shell of his ear, could feel the wind pluck at his clothes and tousle his hair playfully, and if he yelled, roared and pled with the wind, sometimes it would hear him. Jack Frost and the wind were friends and had been for three hundred years but neither could understand the other without the twisted bit of tree, for what new the wind better than the trees.

The wood held the memory of the tree, of the playful wind rustling its leaves, the vengeful wind ripping the leaves and branches down. Trees knew the wind, and the wind knew the trees, but not what to make of the frost child. Jack knew the staff, its gnarled surface and shepherds crook bend, as well as he knew his own hands. He felt as though it was something he had held before he was Jack Frost, something familiar and so known to him that when he'd picked it up, he knew immediately that it had always been and would always be his.

It was through this mutual party that Jack knew the wind. He recognised the wind as the laughing voice that pulled and pushed and swam around him. Through the memory of the staff he could hear its ringing voice and silent questions. It's speech a collection of words stolen from the lips of laughing children, the sighing elderly and groaning adults. It was snatches of conversation lost in great distances and parties held in open fields where the wind could race through the talk and collect the words.

The wind could not comprehend the strange frost child whose frame they wrapped around, whose figure labelled him human, but he was not. They knew the branch, tree's lost limb, and the branch knew the boy as shepherd. Keeper of flocks and the spirit of bitter cold. Now the wind could hear the snowflake with its strange shape, but it was light and cold, like so many snowflakes that the wind had carried laughing through the air. This one was different, powerful, their shepherd, the one to corral them to his will.

The winds grew fond of their frost child, who played with them and joined in on their mischief. They shared his grief and triumph and embraced him and threw him, let him fall to catch him, delighting in his joyful cries and exhilarated whoops and cheers. There were no cheers now, their snow child was aching, and desperate to flee. They obliged him, carried him to the coldest place they knew and tried to balm his wounded heart. Then there was anger, terrible anger. The wind joined his rage, and then stilled with his confusion. They felt the dangerous shadow man, and became still, waiting for their snowchild to tell them what to do. And then they couldn't hear him. One moment they could feel him, his confliction and anger, then suddenly they felt nothing at all. He was gone.

They couldn't feel his desires, hear his voice and they worried. They frantically searched for the chime and cold, searched for the playful, powerful, snowflake who formed the shape of a boy. They tried to find the tree limb, tried to find the memory of leaves and sunshine and creaking in the cold, but they could not. They were gone.

It searched and searched and searched for its frosted boy and the frozen staff but it could not hear them, feel them or see them anywhere. It heard a soft voice, so soft, so hard to understand and gently tugged a familiar and strange frame.

"_Pitch was right. I make a mess out of everything._" Said the boy forlornly and cold, but softly. So hard to understand and the wind could almost, _almost_ make it out, it thought maybe this was the snowflake they sought amongst the storm of them, but where was tree's lost limb?

There was shuddering and cold in the bottom of the chasm, and wind didn't know what the boy wanted, and the boy couldn't understand that the wind was there. But there was a little fairy, a baby tooth there to help him, and soon the chasm was a glow with frost and ice and power. Suddenly sound came roaring into the wind and joyfully it swept up the powerful snowflake boy. Jack whooped in glee, the winds ephemeral arms crushing around him, its fingers searching him for change and injury. He laughed as it flew up and under his hoody, rushing over his icy skin in worry. He felt a mother's chiding at his unexplained absence and relieved grin at his safe return, and he loved the wind back.

He threw his arms wide and embraced it. He showed it his determination to save the Guardians, save the children and stop Pitch. It showed him their determination to help, grabbed tight hold of their boy shaped snowflake and careened towards a bed with monsters hiding beneath it.

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**AN:** So there you have it. I have been pulled into the conscripted belief that Jack needs his staff to fly, and I've taken that as he needs it talk to the wind. His frosty powers should pretty much be inbuilt, but the staff is a focus. Maybe in another three hundred years Jack and the Wind will be familiar enough with each other to not need the staff but for the time being the staff is required.

Hence why he doesn't fly out of the chasm til after the staff is repaired. I'm gonna take liberty and say if the staff is close enough then wind kinda associates and what not magical proximity limit etc. but broken? No Dice.


	2. She Believed In Him

Aaaaand here's another one. No preamble here, just a warning though, again this is un-beta'd.

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**She Believed In Him**  
_or: When you are who you aren't_

She believed in him, and her belief was so strong, _so _strong that she could almost see him, that he could almost touch her. So strong that she followed his movements with her eyes, saw the way he walked so lightly over the snow. She could see his hazy outline, a white haired ghost with her brother's shepherds crook. It had to be. It _must_ be. She wanted it so hard to be him, willed it to be _him_. Her sweet brother, dear brother, dead brother.

"J-Jack?" She stuttered.

His heart swelled with hope and love and inexplicable things. He held his breath.

"Y-You see me?" He stepped closer, her eyes followed him, _followed_ him. She must be able to, she can, which means maybe he could. He reached out. She just needed to "Believe in me."

And she did. She didn't know what he had said, couldn't hear but she knew that face, knew what he had asked on that lake. "_Believe in me."_ And she did believe in him. With all her heart and words that cut deep like knives.

"I do." He gasped a breath into his too tight chest.

"I believe in you Jackson Overland."

And Jack's heart broke. That wasn't his name, she didn't believe in _him_. She was looking for someone else in his shape and his mouth stayed warm as his eyes grew glassy and cold. His heart broke but the smile stayed warm. "I-I'm s-sorry, but I'm not your Jack. I'm J-Jack Frost, pleased to meet you." He stuttered, though he knew she couldn't hear him, she tilted her head as though to try, and brought a hand to her mouth to cover a strange, strangled noise as joy and sorrow mixed in her throat.

His heart ached with a new kind of loneliness and an alien pain. But her eyes so hopeful and once so sad. He could put himself aside, and he smiled.

"You should run inside little lady." He motioned with his crook to the welcoming glow of her home. "Your mumma's probably worried about you." He motioned again.

"J-Jack. Will you, will I." She choked down a sob, eyes beginning to overflow and nose stuffy. "Will I see you again?"

He made sure to nod exaggeratedly, motioning again for her home, she was far too under-dressed for this weather. A grin broke over her face and she smiled, all teeth and tears. He smiled back and waved to her. "Be good!" He encouraged. "I'll be back again soon!" He promised. "We'll have a fantastic snowball fight!" He declared. "We'll play hopscotch!" It sounded right, but it hurt his heart to say so.

She didn't hear but she smiled some more and stared at the opaque vision of her Jackson, and Jack, though he knew her eyes rested on him, felt transparent. She wasn't seeing him, she was seeing a ghost of someone who had gone. She couldn't see him.

She turned reluctantly back to her house, pausing in the doorway to glance back at him and smile a little smile and wave a little wave. He waved one back and once the door had clicked closed, he flew into the clouds into the welcoming arms of the wind and who swept the boy shaped snowflake away to his lake, brushing aside his tears.

It laid him on his lake, the lake from which he was born, a cursed and magical home. It kicked up the snowdrifts and half buried him inside it, trying, playing, to cheer the frost child. But Jack was not swayed to play. The wind drifted over him gently, a mother's hands combing soothingly through his hair, and the soft tugging on his sleeves of siblings wanting to play.

He felt his heart unclench, and let the tears subside. He wanted to bring happiness where he could, especially since he knew his element could be uncaring, merciless and harsh. If Jackson Overland's little sister believed him to be that muddy boy sleeping at the bottom of his pond, if it would stem her tears then he could smile. He could be happy for her, and pretend that maybe she believed in him.

He sat up brushing his hands over the ice as though to peer through the glassy surface and the murk beneath to find the undeserving brother to the girl with the sad eyes. He could not see through the ice, ice he had purposefully thickened so no child could fall through, it's glassy surface just cast back his own distorted reflection.

"I don't know you Jackson Overland." He said to the ice, not knowing if his voice could reach beneath it to the muddy, sleeping boy. "But I will watch that small one you left behind, I can never forgive you for her tears, but I thank you for her life."

He stayed every day that winter in Burgess. He stayed until his hair had started to become slightly ruddy brown and his power over ice began to waiver from the force of her belief. As spring broke he left her, and did not return the next year except to leave a small parting gift on her window. She moved on from her brother and moved on with her life as Jack moved on with his. He visited three years later to find that she no longer stared at him with those sad and longing eyes, but entirely could not see him.

The wind reassured him that this was right and whisked him away to play and Jack buried himself snowballs and fun times. He pretended amongst the mass of children that they were playing with him too and slowly lost the younger sister of Jackson Overland amongst the sea of happy children.

He visited sometimes, watched her bloom into adulthood, and felt a small measure of pride in her happy smile. He played with her children for a time before time took her away. His heart ached and the winter that year was long. The wind shared his grief, and blew his snowflake tears through the streets of Burgess. He didn't know why her death had hurt his heart so, why he cried and grieved, perhaps it was the boy sleeping beneath the ice that he shed tears on behalf of. Perhaps Jackson Overland was the one crying.

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**A/N:** Soooo yeah, not 100% happy with the way it's ended there... tbh. So this is why I need a beta reader. volunteers please.

So there's been a couple of fic around this already where Jack doesn't realise who she is etc etc. Sometimes she sees him in these fics and he remembers and what not, but I decided that she can't really see him, because she is trying so hard to see who he was and not who he is. Because of the nature of legends and immortals her belief in him being Jackson Overland starts to become reality, his hair becoming what she envisions, a normal boy with no power over winter. I feel like in there I should've mention Jack freakin' the heck out and 'run-away!' but I figured he already had an excuse to leave with spring and what not.

I think that him leaving in spring, she might believe he's gone to be reborn, though likely didn't hold those beliefs and just moved on with the season, seeing her successfully through winter and leaving to the afterlife now he knew she wouldn't fall beneath the ice. Anyway, just some thoughts.

Please review if you can, or even better send me a PM and volunteer to beta :)


	3. Fear and Fun

**Fear and Fun**  
_Or: The boy who didn't listen._

Pitch had known Jack, known Jackson Overland before he became the boy who hadn't listened. Fear was a necessity. People didn't often feel this way, particularly when they were quivering with said fear, but it was important.

Jackson Overland was devoid of a particular kind of fear. Later Pitch would associate this fear void with stuntmen and thrill seekers, but there hadn't been enough of those kinds of people when he'd come across the young trickster for him to classify them. Jackson Overland was a young man who didn't feel fear because it never crossed his mind to.

He hung upside down from trees, climbed to the very top where the branches were by rights far too weak for even such a slim frame; and as they creaked and groaned and sometimes snapped there was the briefest tantalising taste of fear, and then laughter.

"Hahaha, that was close!" Jack laughed feet safely on the ground.

He had some luck that kid.

Pitch tried to invade his dreams with great falls and broken limbs, but to no avail, the nightmares just slid away like water off a ducks back. There was one fear that Jack held close to his heart though, and that was fear for his sister. The littlest Overland was the recipient of Jacks most guarded affections, the centre of his universe and the one whom he feared for. Jackson Overland never feared for himself, but could be consumed by fear for his little sister.

Pitch visited nightmares upon his sister to get her to talk him into more reasonable fears but it never worked, the young girl had such courage in her little heart when her brother let her hide in his bed from him. She believed so dearly when he said that he would be fine, and he had yet to fall from a tree so how could she know it would happen? Her big brother was stronger than he looked! She believed him, and her fears set to rest until the net nightmare. She believed in him and that gave her courage. Such courage against Pitch's nightmares that soon they were hard to settle in to her. Jackson had never had to prove his courage, as it was not the absence of fear, and he'd never really felt fear.

But he would.

It was with a dreadful knowing that Pitch felt Jackson's fear. Crisp and strong, bitter as black coffee. He hid in the dark of the pond as Jackson revealed his courage.

"Let's play hopscotch, like we play every day." His voice almost free of the fearful tremor that permeated his body, and Pitch watched their blue shadows on the underside of the ice. Watched as they traded places, how fear gave way to relief.

Then the fear came thick and terrible as the ice gave way. The water so frigidly cold stilled his limbs so quickly, and as his last breath stole away Pitch sighed sadly.

He wasn't one to hurt children, he didn't enjoy seeing them injured or in physical pain. Yes, he wanted their fear, but fear was good for children, for adults as well. He hadn't brought fear into Jackson as he had wanted to and he knew now that his younger sister was destined to an almost crippling fear of ice and water, and Jackson…

He cast his gaze to the figure that slowly sunk down to him from above. He watched with only mild surprise as the man in the moon shone down his light and lifted Jack Frost from beneath the ice of the pond, a young new boy filled with the wonders and pleasures of winter. A boy who saw fun in the ice and the cold when no one had much right to anymore.

Old man winter was bitter and merciless, the new bring of winter being born from ice of the pond was far kinder than he had become. A snowflake for the wind to blow, a shepherd for frost and snow, and a laugh without fear of the cold. And as the man in the moon lifted this new creation from the water, Jackson Overland disappeared from its glow.

A small cold body fell down into Pitch's arms where he held him gently before settling him quietly into the muddy bottom of the pond. A child that fear had failed. He buried him deep in the dark of the water, and once satisfied left.

It was many years later staring into defiant blue eyes that Pitch felt regret for Jackson Overland.

"We're going to have a little fun instead." Jack smiled to Jamie.

Pitch Black had been defeated by fun just as Jackson Overland had. He wondered if Jack would realised it. See the flaw in too much fun and not enough fear. He wondered if the man in the moon would let him realise it.

Hiding in the bottom of his lair, licking his wounds and hiding from his own nightmares, Jack found him. Pitch grimaced at the parallel of hiding down in the deep and dark just as Jackson Overland, the forgotten muddy boy, was hidden after being defeated by fun. Though Jack found him, as he hadn't found the boy he was.

"Pitch." His stance was defensive. Pitch Black, the nightmare king, laughed.

"Was my defeat not enough for you Jack?" He snapped, voice irritatingly raw.

Jack frowned. "I remember you."

"Congratulations." He replied snarkily. "Do you want a prize? It's been a year since you defeated me and you still remember me."

Jack waved a hand in frustration. "No, not like, I mean, I remember you from when I… when I drowned." He finished lamely, unsure of his words.

Pitch blinked. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You were there." Jack pressed on, inching closer to the nightmare King, eyes trained on his face, anger lining his words. "You were waiting in the water for me. You _killed_ me."

Pitch stared, and before he could halt himself he laughed. A terrible grating, wheezy sound filled with cobwebs. Fun had killed Jackson Overland, and Jack Frost was here to blame fear.

"No Jack, _you_ did." He laughed, warily pushing himself to his feet. "People can't feel fear when they're dead Jack, no point in me killing them."

"What?" Jack looked down for a moment confused then snapped his eyes back on to Pitch, confusion mixing with his anger, blunting its edges. "What do you mean _I_ killed him? _I_ am _him_."

"Jackson Overland is dead at the bottom of your pond." Pitch rasped. "Because he didn't feel enough fear to know not to skate on thin ice, too concerned with having fun, so I would say that it was you who killed him Jack. Fun is your department right?"

The next moment he was encased in ice, frost covered the walls of his lair and Jack's staff glowed with power. "Take it back." He snarled.

"No." Pitch replied.

"Take it back!" Jack howled smashing him against a wall, his staff positioned threateningly to strike again.

"This won't fix it Jack. This won't bring that little body at the bottom of the lake back." Pitch yelled back, grunting with pain as he tried to work his fingers free of the ice that encased him.

"Then what will?"

Pitch saw the desperation and found his opportunity. "Fear." He said. "You and your precious guardians need to stop being so afraid of it. I once told you that cold and dark were perfect for each other. So is fear and fun. Let children feel fear, let them be afraid drowning beneath the ice. Let them feel fear so they can have courage and fun."

Jack appeared conflicted, his eyes darting back and forth as he thought. Without another word he vanished in the wind's angry howl as it whipped viciously through his caverns hunting for its wayward, angry, snowflake boy.

Pitch sighed. Now he was stuck frozen to the wall of his lair until he thawed enough to escape it. Luckily cold and dark when so well together, so it wasn't really so uncomfortable to be surrounded by ice.

It wasn't until next year that Jack visited him again, he came during Halloween.

Pitch lazed in his lair almost recovered enough from his encounter with the Guardians to begin properly functioning again. He watched as Jack carefully approached him, guarded but not angry and spoiling for a fight.

"Show me." He said, voice firm but still unsure. He licked his lips nervously, eyes trained on the ones of those he considered an enemy. "Show me how fear saves Jackson Overland."

Pitch grinned. "I'll show you why fear and fun should work together." Because that's how you convince a boy who won't listen, you show him.

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A/N: Tah Dah!

I'm thinking that the actual "story" title for this is all wrong and I'll should rename it because blerg but I was tired. again un beta'd let me know what you think.


	4. Cold and Dark

Something a little lighter.

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**Cold and Dark  
**or: The First Time Jack Frost met Pitch Black

He had pushed it too far. His swimming vision and that unmistakable bone deep ache told him that much. He had pushed way too far.

The wind was holding tight to him but the snowflake was tired and heavy with the need to sleep, he kept slipping from the long fingers of the wind and falling a little before being caught again. He needed to rest for a while.

He was almost back at that pond that he liked, that he was born from, but he wouldn't make it. So heavy with sleep that the wind couldn't keep grasp of him long and he stumbled closer and closer to the ground. He blearily spotted a small clearing in the trees and tried to head for it, tripping over the edges of branches as he came down. He all but fell into a snowdrift that had formed around the edge of the clearing and wasted no time burying himself in the cold dry powder, joining the other snowflakes in the heap.

He was hardly buried in the snow before he was out, lost in the cold dark of exhausted rest.

He wasn't sure how long he slept but it wasn't long enough before he was fished out of his resting spot, hauled out by his blue hood until he was dangling above his snow drift, held aloft by a dark figure.

"What do you think you're doing here?" It hissed.

Jack blinked blearily at the stranger. "Sleeping?"

That was apparently not the right answer, and the figure shook him a little knocking most of the snow that still sat on his shoulders off of him. His eyes began to clear of the drowsiness to properly take in the cruel nose and golden eyes. The man, for it could only be a man with a voice so ominous, was clad in a tight black tunic of sorts, his mind was not forthcoming with the details of the garb, but it was long and draped down to the ground, stark against the white snow like an ink blot on perfectly white paper.

"And you were sleeping at the entrance to my home because why exactly?" The man asked critically, taking in the flush of the winter spirits cheeks with a calculating scrutiny.

Jack shrugged, or shrugged best he could given he was suspended in the air by his hoodie. "This is where I fell. Who are you?"

"Pitch." The figured replied sceptically putting him back down on the ground, maybe a little rougher than was strictly necessary. "Pitch Black."

Jack swayed unsteadily on his feet. "Jack Frost." He muttered back.

"Jack Frost?" Pitch eyed him. Jack waited for the scorn.

He'd met quite a few other spirits now, at the ripe age of 260 years young he knew what to expect when meeting others immortals. Mistrust and instant dislike. He'd learnt that many who were associated with the element of cold weren't well liked by others. They were the bringers of ice and death and lean times. They were of a season of hardship and no matter the fun Jack tried to bring, he knew that the snow of winter was sometimes stained with the red of death. This was part of nature and though he didn't like it in the least he had long since accepted it, after all people die in the heat, in the fires of summer as well.

Being the spirit of winter itself, its shepherd and keeper, he was the recipient of much abhorrence, so it came as some surprise when Pitch merely took it in stride.

"Hm, I thought you'd be smaller considering how often I hear that people mistake you for a sprite." He said with a tone of mild disinterest, his eyes glinted with the trace of mockery and something hidden.

Jack was stunned, and that was just enough to wake him up and get him to pay a little more attention to whom he was speaking with.

Pitch Black… Pitch Black... Jack's mind slowly ticked over. "You're the bogeyman!" The force of his shock banished away the remnants of sleep from his eyes and he looked, properly looked, at the other. He was dark, intimidating and much taller than he had thought for a figure that hid in closets and under beds. His face was sharp, his frame a menacing shadow against the snow, and his eyes bore down into his heart and grabbed it tight, inspecting it for signs of fear.

"I am." He replied dryly. "Are you going to run away now? Please run away." He grinned in an unhappily awicked way.

Jack ignored the comment, and the terrifying canines. "You're the Sandman's counterpart!" He grinned. "I didn't realise that you lived so close to my pond."

Pitch blinked, looking at him carefully, as though Jack was familiar and new at the same time. "There was a cabin here once but it was abandoned after one of the young children died. The space beneath their old bed was quite suitable and you keep it rather cold here." He replied almost conversationally, but there was something else something waiting, bated, a terrible truth.

Jack looked down sheepishly, misinterpreting the bait as chiding. "Yeah, sorry, side effect of me hanging around here so much."

Pitch shrugged. "I prefer cold." He said disinterested in conversation though his eyes were still scrutinizing him, and there was the tiniest sliver of disappointment hidden in the baritones.

Jack stared. Pitch wasn't so dismissive of him, so eager to hate him just because snow didn't melt on his skin. He was obviously not happy with Jack's disturbance so close to his home but he wasn't filled with scorn and hate like every other spirit he's met. Then he supposed that this was the King of Nightmares, he probably took pleasure in the cold and dark, the things that frightened men. Jack couldn't stand the scorn and hatred for being the spirit of winter, but he could deal with being disliked just for breathing in the wrong direction as Pitch seemed want to do.

Pitch frowned at him. "Now if you don't mind moving away from my doorway, I have work to do."

He considered for a moment if he should refuse and return to that comfortable stack of snow he'd been fished from, though he had rested a little, he could probably make it to his pond now to rest properly on the edge of the coldest ice he could find. It wouldn't do to make enemies with a neighbour, especially given this particular neighbour. He sighed, voicing that little bit of irritation he felt at being roused and forced to move when there was a perfectly good snow drift right there thank you very much, but oh well. "Right."

Pitch nodded approvingly, and melted into the shadows.

Jack grinned, the bogeyman didn't seem that bad. When he next slept he dreamt of cracks across thin ice and water in his lungs.

* * *

**A/N:** And from that day Jack kept wide of Pitch Black… somewhat.

Sooo this came about from that moment where the Guardians are saying that Pitch was gonna do something bad and Jack kinda scoffs "What? you mean the boogeyman?" as if 'Hey that guys a pussy cat as long as you don't dump tonnes of snow down the entrance to his lair' which makes me thinks he's not had many problems with the guy. I mean Pitch doesn't like it when you're around, keep your distance and what not, but overly not a terrible person. He likes the cold after all.

It's kind of shippy if you squint, but really I just like the dynamic of Pitch and Jack. I think if Jack had accepted Pitch's offer or "business pitch" if you will, Jack Frost would've become what I imagine many believe Jack Frost to be, a nipper of noses, some scumbag who freezes things and causes terrible blizzards while cackling maniacally. A lot of my housemates actually commented on the way Jack is all happy woo in ROTG when most of them know him as Old Man Winter or that maniacal snow man, murderer of children.

Might do some follow up to an earlier drabble a little later.

un-beta'd - I'm sorry.


	5. Mothers

**Mothers**  
_or: Putting 2 and 2 together._

He wasn't brooding. That was for sure. He was the Guardian of Fun and the Spirit of Winter; he didn't have time for brooding.

But he did.

He sat amongst the branches of a fir, watching the steady snowfall he had agitated from the clouds. It was a soft dry powder and sat in thick mounds on the fronds of evergreens. He wasn't so far from his pond, though he didn't frequent it so much at the moment knowing how close Pitch's lair was to it and how unhappy the King of Nightmares would be. He wasn't afraid of the Bogeyman, but he'd seen much blood in the snow from men who'd poked supposedly downed bears. He was in no rush to join their ranks. He'd leave Pitch to lick his wounds in peace for a few years.

Snow was falling and children were sleeping warm and safe in their beds, he didn't have many duties he had to take care of. He would take a moment of peace and solitude. Well almost solitude. The wind was rustling the green needles, and Jack could feel a playful laugh as it 'ruined' his careful work. He chuckled as it whistled by him to dislodge another clump of snow, snagging on his clothes with playful tugs as though to unseat him from the tree with the rest of the snow. He laughed as he wobbled a little on his branch before the wind took away to push more snow from the leaves.

He hoped that Mother Nature knew what a bad influence he was on the winds that she'd gifted him. Though it had been the Man in the Moon who had raised him up from beneath the ice and breathed life into his frozen lungs, he owed some of his power and allegiance to Mother Nature. After all, Wind and Winter were hers.

She had found him once, while he'd been itching all over and rolling around in frosted grass, creating thicker trails of ice with each touch. She'd laughed at him, the sound like sweet tinkling of falling icicles, and gathered him into her arms, tutting at him.

_"What is a Shepherd of Winter who doesn't tend to his flock?" She teased. "Little Frost child, what have you done to yourself?"_

_"Nothing." He whimpered only a little, trying not to move too much. Her arms were strange and new, but old and familiar. He felt as though he had once been held like this, but when he had been much smaller. She was soft and smelt of the rain that fell in spring, she was warmer than he, but not uncomfortably so. Cocooned in her arms he felt safe and hidden from terrors of the world, from the harsh words of the other elementals that teased him and mocked him for his beautiful frost. A part of him cried out in indignation at being held like a five year old, but that part was easily silenced._

_She laughed again, sweetly and so warm. She told him that he must go make snow; that the itch was the call of his season begging for his attention like a dog scratching at his master's door. He had asked her if that was his purpose, to shepherd winter around._

_"Sweet child, not a purpose, but a job. A shepherd's job is to tend his flock, to know when they should be sheared. But it is not his purpose. His purpose is what fulfils the deep desire of his heart. Is snow all you could ever want?" She softly crooned._

_He shook his head, confused. He had lots of snow and pretty frost but that didn't make him happy. Snow was fun but lonely, it was sometimes soft and sometimes it was cruel and icy. No one liked winter, no one loved and welcomed it as he longed to be loved and welcomed. No one really liked him or spoke to him so softly._

_He gazed up at her, at her eyes as beautiful as the changing seasons, and her long shifting hair. The wind had tangled around the long strands, cooing softly 'mother, mother'. Was that it? This woman made him feel as he imagined the young children felt when they had been scooped up in the arms of their mother. He felt an ache in his heart. Was this his mother? He asked her._

_The corners of her eyes crinkled with a gentle smile. "Sorry dearest frost child, but you are not mine, though some of your makeup is of my blood."_

_The words echoed somewhere in his soul 'Sorry Jack, but you cannot play today, maybe tomorrow'. The voice, so familiar and strange, was not truly there but seemed so close and warm. And yet, it was so long ago that there was no memory from it. Was it his pond, from before he'd come up from the ice? The wind whispered to him all kinds of secrets, had his pond as well? It might've, after all he could only play once he'd left his ice._

_She laughed and set him down gently on his feet. It was only there that he really took notice as to how small he was in comparison to her; no wonder she'd been able to cocoon him in her arms like a toddler. He frowned, and she pressed her forefinger to where his brows had creased together._

_"Don't fret so, shepherd of winter; a purpose is a hard thing, but you'll find it one day." And then she was gone._

He hadn't seen very much of Mother Nature at all – she was a busy woman – but the memories he had of her were all permeated with a sad ache, though for the longest time he could never understand why. She treated him as though he were a beloved child of hers. He'd been born from beneath the ice of his pond; when he was cut, he bled murky water rather than the red stain of mortal animals. He was a creature of nature, an elemental, and should've been filled with nothing but the feeling of her tender warmth. And he had been, but there had been an ache somewhere deep and murky, unseeable and unknowable to him.

He understood now though. The human heart had been the thing to ache with a longing for one he couldn't remember. The memories were soft and far, far away now, but they were of a mother who had held him as Mother Nature had, soothed his fears and aches as she had, and whispered soft words to him.

_"Be careful."_

He swallowed. He was hardly one to brood. To sit and dwell when there was fun to be had. He wouldn't have survived 300 years of aching loneliness if he had been so quick to fall into his own unhappiness. But now he remembered. He had memories. He remembered the vague shapes of a well-meaning father and gentle mother. Remembered tiny hands and terrified eyes. Smiling eyes. Sad eyes.

The girl with the sad eyes. The sister of the muddy boy. His sister.

He didn't cry, his heart ached but he didn't cry. He'd watched her grow from afar, he'd even thrown snow with her children. He had given her comfort during the winter he'd died. He had cried for her even though he hadn't understood why. It didn't hurt to think of her, she had not suffered so greatly for his absence that he felt a terrible person. He hadn't seen his parents though, and he regretted that now. Adults were of no real interest to him, always so busy making rules. He cared that he had missed seeing them, knowing of what became of them. But he didn't care too much, just enough. He did not mourn the feelings he could barely remember once swelling in his chest. It bothered him, a little.

He sighed, lifting from his branch, the wind spiriting him over to his pond. He sat on its ice staring down into the distorted dark with a morbid question in his mind. Was he really Jackson? Was this his flesh, filled with the cold and the murky water that he'd been lifted from? Were these his eyes stained blue with winter? Or was there still a boy sleeping at the bottom of this pond, alone down in the deep dark?

Was he born of ice and water and magic, or was he flesh, turned to this purpose? Was he really Jackson? He had his memory now, but…

He brushed aside the light dusting of snow that had gathered, trying to see into the bottom of the pond, hunting out its secrets, but as always the dark of the bottom of the pond gave nothing away.

Had his parents retrieved him from the water in the thaw?

Had they retrieved the muddy boy and buried him in the cool, dark earth?

Had there been a body to retrieve?

Had they mourned long?

Had they moved on?

Once he'd been born from beneath the ice, he had only had eyes for the sad girl, not the parents. He didn't know what happened to his mother, what happened to her happy smile after her son was gone. Had they had another child to sleep in his bed or had it been left empty?

He thought of his bed in the small house. Had they stayed there or been too grieved by his empty bed?

Then a thought hit him. Suddenly, brutally.

Pitch.

The reason that the hole under the bed, the entrance to the lair of Pitch Black was so close…

_"There was a cabin here once but it was abandoned after one of the young children died." _It had been his family. Pitch had chosen his abandoned bed to build his home beneath!

Had he known what the lost child had become? Had he known that the boy beneath the ice had been risen by the man in the moon that he so hated?

He scoured his memory, vague and vaguer, he almost lost hope of remembering anything when he recalled the faint glow of golden eyes. It was not his favourite memory to revisit, but he remembered his death clearly. His vision had been growing dim, and those yellow eyes, a demon's eyes, at the bottom of the frigid water. Those arms that were held out to catch the slowly sinking boy. The arms of a terrible figure.

He had thought that he had been seeing things, but now it was so clear. Pitch had been there when he died.

Had the King of Nightmares been gunning for him, or for the darling sister who had first cracked the ice? Had she been the one to crack it? Had it been Pitch that created those deadly spider web fractures?

Jack had never held much fear in his life, and he knew that fear was just as unfamiliar to Jackson. Had that been why Pitch killed him?

Did he, just because, or because, that didn't mean, but why, why had he been in the lake? Why did Jackson need to die?! 300 years of loneliness! 300 years of scorn and mistrust! And his family, his girl with the sad eyes!

Fury, white hot and wickedly cold, raced through him.

The soft, soft snow became pelting hail. The wind took up his fury and snatched him from the ice, holding him close as they barrelled towards where there had once been a rickety old bed. They would make Pitch tell him why the Jackson boy had deserved to die.

* * *

**A/N**: BETA'D! a Million thank you's to Just Call Me Endy for beta-ing this chapter.

Oooh yeah!

So back in Cold and Dark is where Pitch's little quote about his home was and I had a review about the after math and Jack putting 2 and 2 together to work out that it was his little sister aaaall those years ago.

So this is what happens. Though I kinda messed with it a little made it a bit more mum orientated than fretting over little sister.

Next Entry won't continue this little series with Jack and Pitch, leave them alone for a bit to work out their differences.


	6. Aquaphobia

**Aquaphobia**  
_or: Why you should forcefully introduce winter to water_

All he could think about was how funny it would be. That smug face morphed into one of shock, that pretty white hair now the same rainbow hues as his beloved eggs. He spared no thought for the hoody or the old leather pants, though maybe he should've considered them. He didn't really know much about Jack Frost.

He knew the kid was irritating as hell, a trickster who loved to get into his fur and nip at his skin like a flea. He knew all of the buttons to push to get a rise out of him; he knew all the things he needed to say to get E. Aster Bunnymund to lose his cool.

It wasn't really very hard. Bunny had a notoriously short fuse.

It was so short in fact that all it had taken was for Jack to make a light jab at the fact that many more of his eggs this year featured flower patterns than last year's theme of swirling vines for Bunny to push back. Literally.

For a moment he did get that prized shocked face as Jack went to step back and tripped on a conveniently raised root. His arms pin wheeled as he began to fall backwards, and in that moment Bunny felt so incredibly smug, lips pulled in a satisfied smirk as he watched Jack begin to fall.

Said winter spirit had stopped his pin wheeling arms to throw back his staff moving to plant it into the ground behind him and hold himself up only to give a tiny horrified gasp of surprise when the beloved limb did not find solid land, but splashed into a river of dye.

It was then that the smugness disappeared from Bunny's face, almost as fast as Jack's face had changed from the shocked expression that Bunny had so cherished to utter horror, eyes wide in terror, mouth popping open to let out a frightened cry.

His arms reached out for the wind, snatching at the air desperately. His precious partner in crime had been busy rustling leaves at the other side of the cavern, and even with it racing, it wouldn't make it in time. It flattened the grass as it rushed desperately to get to its boy, but it wouldn't make it.

Bunny reached forward much, much too late to stop what he had begun, the tips of his nails brushing the crook of Jack's staff, causing a rush of frost up his arm. Jack was beyond afraid.

Then everything happened at once.

There was a quiet splash as Jack hit the water and a mighty roar as the world irrupted into cold. It raced out from with a boom, the trees of the spring haven creaking and cracking as in less than a second their sap was frozen within their veins. Hoarfrost coated every surface in a moment and the earth itself groaned from the cold. Bunny had closed his eyes impulsively loud splintering sound of Jack's winter ripping the air. Frost rushed over his fur, his face suddenly stung with biting cold, and he wondered if his eyelids would now be frozen shut. It took some effort to pry his eyelids apart and once his eyes were open he stared agape at what had once been a warm haven of constant spring.

Everything was white. His flowers were lost beneath a thick coating of ice, frozen perfectly where they stood. The trees were thick with it and the grass had become icy blades, biting into his feet as he bound down to what once had been a burbling rive of dye. The sudden cold mixed with the humid air of the warren to create an eerie fog over the now solid ice, impenetrable to his eyes.

"JACK!" He yelled. He tried to bat aside the mist that rose from the solid, frozen river, the gesture useless as more and more rose up from the ice. He stepped onto the river carefully, though he needn't have been concerned. It was frozen solid down to the riverbed.

"JACK!" His voice cracked a little as a panic colder than the ice he stood on began to close around him. He brought his face down close to the ice, hoping to see through the frozen rainbow of colours. His heart hammered in his chest, alarmed at the sudden change from light ribbing to this arctic terror.

He scrabbled forward, front paws splayed on the glassy surface searching the ice through the thick fog. His nose was frozen beyond being able to smell anything, not that Jack had much of a scent anyway; the spirit of winter smelt of all those things he represented, crisp cold ice, and right now cold was all around him. He squinted in the fog, seeing nothing of the blue hoody. His paws grew numb as he ran the soft pads over the surface, searching for irregularity in its glassy sheen. They grew so numb that he almost didn't feel the small rise of Jack's staff just poking through the ice not far from the shore.

"Jack!" His heart lurched as he begun clawing at the ice. It was solid as stone, but he was a Pooka, damn it, and he'd created these tunnels through the earth, through its very core in fact! He'd dug through mountains and bedrock and he'd be damned if he couldn't dig through some bloody ice!

Chunks of colour flew through the air as he dug feverishly, desperately. He knew that Jack didn't really need to breathe, he knew that Jack's veins were muddy water and not blood; and he knew ice was where he was born from, what he left in his foot prints, but just the thought of him completely still in his river, his young teenager's body terrified and huddled and trapped in ice...

He dug out around the curled form of Jack, mindful not to scratch the boy, carefully excavating him as a treasure hunter would a precious gold trinket. Thankfully Jack lay in a small misshapen bubble of air and was not completely rapped in ice, it wasn't in the very fibres of the blue hoody as Bunny had been afraid it would be. He slowed his frantic scratching, gently brushing away the frost, but his heart was still up in his throat, and would be until the youngest Guardian was safely free from the colourful cocoon ice.

"Jack!" he called, nudging the frost child with his nose to stir him, but Jack didn't move, didn't stir, didn't respond. He remained curled around his staff, only the very slight tremble in his frame giving him any sign of life.

The wind was plucking at him fretfully. Ruffling his hair, then smoothing it down, and then ruffling it up again nervously. It blew some of the ice chunks back over him and onto Bunny, none to gently buffeting him, angry with the ancient creature for scaring its snowflake boy so.

"Come on frosty." Bunny lifted Jack from small crater he had formed in the ice.

Jack made a small and pitiful noise and uncurled a little, taking gasping breaths. He seemed to slowly be regaining himself.

"Hey," Bunny jostled him a little, trying to prompt him out of the tight ball he was curled into. "Frostbite, it's alright." He nudged him again.

Jack suddenly exploded out of Bunny's arms, the wind ripping him away and up into the air. Jack's eyes were wild and frantic, his body twitching this way and that as he looked around the warren in horror and surprised. He had turned the haven of spring into a world preserved in ice.

"B-Bunny, I'm sorry I-" His eyes were still wide with panic his lungs still heaving in great gulps of air as though he really had been suffocating moments before.

"Jack, its fine! Just get back down here! What's wrong?" Bunny yelled into the swirling wind, looking up at the distraught spirit. Since it had grabbed Jack the wind had been rushing into him, pushing him back on the ice as it cradled Jack up in the air.

Jack tossed his head back and forth sharply, clearly conveying the message that he definitely did not want to talk about it.

Bunny's eyes were streaming from the bitingly cold wind. "Will you at least call off the wind?"

Jack licked his lips again, swallowing hard and taking some deep and calming breaths. If the Pooka strained his ears he could almost hear the winter spirit humming softly to the wind, placating it with soothing sounds and steady breathing. He sighed deeply and the wind began to recede from its brutality, calming, restraining itself to ferreting over its boy, attempting to soothe him.

Jack cracked a small, forced and shaky grin. "It's angry at you."

"You don't say." Bunny said dryly, folding his arms tightly over his chest to try and warm himself. "Now will ya get down here?"

Jack's eyes darted to the tunnel entrance nervously, as though he contemplated a quick flight from the warren. To run away from what he'd done, fearing the scolding he was sure was coming. He glanced at the frozen river and felt his heart squeeze, his breath catching as though his throat were clogged with water.

"Jack!"

His eyes snapped back to Bunny and he gasped, as though remembering to breathe. He took a steadying breath and coaxed the wind into letting him down, reassuring it that he was fine, he would be fine. And it fretted, that the Pookan had frightened him and that he was still scared and he should just stay with the wind. Jack was firm though, and sent his ancient friend away.

Standing on the ground, away from the ice, Jack leant on his staff. He tried to appear casual, resting on the extra limb as he normally would be, but Bunny could see the tremble of his legs. Jack was still recovering from being scared out of his mind. He just refused to show it.

"What happened?" Bunny asked, hopping cautiously closer.

Jack just shook his head, and tried for a devil may care smile. "Just got startled I suppose."

Bunny frowned, coming closer still, locking his eyes with Jack's own nervous irises. Liar. "Bull. Ya don't just freeze a river completely solid ovar nuthin'. What's up?"

"Nothing." Jack replied too quickly, much too quickly. He knew that. The way Bunny's ears twitched and eyes narrowed. He ran an agitated hand through his hair, scowling, heart jumping. "It's fine. I'm fine Bunny."

"No you're not fine." Bunny retorted, inching close enough that he could reach out and touch the other now. "You're flighty as a deer in huntin' season, an' you're frostin' up yer own ice!"

Jack glanced down and sure enough the already iced over blades of grass were becoming coated in a thicker layer of frost, though it was happening slowly, the frost fern pattern that he knew Jack for were gently spreading rather than blasting over everything.

"I-" His voice stalled on the next lie. He had no convenient explanation, so the truth could work. Some of the truth at least. "I don't like water."

Bunny eyed him sceptically. "You spend most of ya time hanging out at a pond."

"_My_ pond." Jack corrected, as though it changed that he lived near a large body of water. "My _frozen_ pond." He emphasized again.

Bunny persisted. "So you're fine with ice but not with water."

"Yes." Jack agreed.

"Happy ta be stuck in _solid_ ice, just not water." He continued.

"Yes." Jack frowned. "I mean, I-."

"Why?"

"What?" Jack blinked.

"Why are you afraid of water?" Bunny leant forward, eyes narrowed in scrutiny. "Yer still shakin'."

Jack's grip on his staff firmed, ice twisting around it. "Do I need a reason?" He wanted out of here.

"Yes." Bunny sighed. "Look I'm sorry, I shouldn'ta pushed ya into the river, didn't realize you were so scared of water." Bunny backed away a little, though not far enough that he couldn't grab Jack if the winter spirit tried to flee.

Jack's shoulder rose defensively as he tried to argue "I'm not-"

"Yer still shaking." Bunny interrupted him, throwing a pointed look to the hand that trembled at Jacks' side. Jack tightened his fist, frost curling around it ever so slightly.

Jack exhaled sharply through his nose. "I'm fine, Cottontail." He ground out.

Bunny snorted, shaking his head. "You're not fine. You just froze this whole bloody chamber!" He said gesturing at the once spring-filled antechamber.

Jack shied away as though Bunny was to strike him, his heart thundering, his mind still racing and reeling. "I'm sorry, I-"

"Just got afraid?"

"Yes."

"You're _that_ afraid of water?"

"Bunny just drop it." He scrunched up his eyes as though he could keep the words of the Pooka out, but Bunny was relentless.

"You're so afraid of water that you completely froze the river?"

Jack flinched, his mouth dry, his heart still pounding. He wanted to flee but Bunny was so close and he knew he wouldn't let him. "It was a kneejerk reaction."

"Why are you so afraid? You don't need to breathe."

Jack could see where this was going. "Bunny." He warned.

"Even if you can't swim, it's not like you'd drown."

Jacks heart thundered in his chest and water caught in his throat and it all burst out like a badly-cracked dam. "Because I have!" Bunny took a step back as frost crackled out from the panicked ice spirit. "Damn it Cottontail!" Jack gestured wildly with his staff, a blinding terror turning to blinding anger as he lashed out. He knew he was only lashing out because he'd been so afraid earlier but that damn Pooka just couldn't let it be! Tears welled in his eyes as he slowly broke under the after weight of tremendous fear. As knowledge crushed down on him with terrible force and painful recollection.

"I'm not like you! I'm not like the other guardians! I-I had a human life but I didn't just _become_ Jack Frost." He shook, he shook so hard that the frost was dislodged from his shoulders. Bunny's ears lay flat, his eyes frozen open in shock as Jack yelled at him. His arm hung motionless in the air from when he'd begun to reach out uncertainly to the distraught boy but found himself far too unsure.

"I." Jack choked on his words, eyes filled with unshed tears. "Bunny, I died." The words were a broken whisper. "I fell through the ice saving my little sister and I drowned, _that's_ how the man in the moon got his spirit of winter. He fished a drowned boy out from under the ice." His voice cracked like sap in the pine trees in the middle of winter. The wind picked up, gently combing its long fingers through his hair to soothe him.

"Jack, I-".

Jack shook his head, face drooping as tears fell. His shaking had increased. "Don't."

Bunny couldn't swallow past the lump of guilt and pain in his throat. To remember your own death. Jack really was special. Other spirits were chosen when they were alive, many of them created for their purpose, but Jack… He couldn't imagine something so horrible.

He reached out but the wind pulled Jack away, tucking him gently in its arms and pulling him away, the ground crackling where he broke free of the ice he'd created. Jack tried to straighten out, to recollect himself, the wind sighing in his ear.

"Don't… don't tell the others." Jack requested, hood pulled over to mask his face. Bunny nodded his acquiescence and Jack was pulled backwards out of the warren like a shot, whisked away where he could lie still in his snow and remember he was Jack Frost and his pond would never eat him; it was a part of him, and he was its creation. He was the child of the pond and of winter. He shared the blood of Mother Nature and was born by the Man in the Moon's ill-conceived plans. He was not a drowning boy.

He would hide in the snow and try hard to remember the muddy boy beneath the ice, but try desperately to forget the fluid rushing through his lungs, the stillness, the powerlessness, and the darkness of his watery grave.

* * *

A:N/ Oh wow another variation (not even a variation) on a theme!How new and/or original. It's been done I know. but I wanted to have a crack at it. So this is how the guardians find out about how Jack came to be. He never tells them, he gets his memory goes and helps them and they don't pry about who he was or why he forgot.

I think he forgot because he died. Though he'd still have an instinctual body memory of Jackson, and a memory tied deep to his soul that being in water was baaaaaaaaad news but he couldn't work out why. Now he knows why and remembers why, it's much worse.

I don't know why Jack was in the Warren, could just have been bored and now he has places to go people to speak to. Obviously this bit of fiction is post ROTG film. So he has friends!

Thanks once more to my beta who probably finds my Australian English spelling a pain in her Word spell checker :P


	7. Blackjack

**Blackjack  
**_Or: When the sun sets in the Arctic_

In moments of quiet when the world was still with winter, Jack would wonder. He would wonder what would've become of him had Pitch not made his move and forced the Man in the Moon into making his? He wondered what would've happened if he'd accepted Pitch's offer, because looking back on it now, when he'd been angry and cold and desperate to be one of the guardians, to be accepted by them, Pitch had made a good point.

He hadn't recognized it for what it was, but now he saw the vulnerability on the King of Fear's face, he could hear the sudden anger of one whom was spurned. He knew Pitch too had longed for a family. He had discovered from the Sandman that Pitch had become a Nightmare King through fear for his daughter, his noble intentions and honourable heart warped by fearlings and nightmare men.

Jack had been born of the ice for the fear for his sister.

In this way he saw that they were the same. Both of them had were something so naturally disliked by others, cold and darkness, but Jack had been left in solitude and had stayed away from others, where Pitch had turned back on them in hatred.

He sighed, falling deeper into his snow drift. He was reclined down in the Arctic, watching as for the first time in months, day slowly gave way to night. Blizzards had made him weary and he enjoyed watching the transition from day to night; he would visit again to watch it change back. He stretched a little before relaxing again, his eyes at a sleepy half-mast.

Night was coming.

He should've been more aware.

He should have known the instant he felt the chill. He was never cold. Never once had he felt the cold, not even in the deepest, darkest winter he could bury himself in had he felt the biting cold that others had complained to him of. But this gave him a chill.

It started at his toes, the touch of ghosts and crying dreams. He hadn't noticed until they had taken his feet, and when he did notice the inky stain it was too late.

He cried out in terror and lifted himself from the ground but the shadows had already caught him. Pitch was there and he was laughing.

"I had hoped you'd join me willingly. This will do in the meantime."

And the nightmare descended. It fell before his eyes and filled his ears and heart with terrible cold and black. Black as tar, black as pitch.

He lost what it was to be Jack Frost and became someone new as his watery veins were stained with ink, his frost fern patterns turned to sharp spikes. He became what Pitch wanted, a harsh winter spirit. An unforgiving blizzard.

And he laughed.

He laughed and laughed as the dark filled him up, because it was so funny wasn't it? All that time as Jack Frost and it only took a moment for him to become this darker Jack. It was probably all the bitterness. So funny it was that it took the darkest of vision to make him see clearly.

His lungs shuddered and his legs gave way beneath new burden, power, and slavery. He felt bitter winter in his heart, a new and heavy presence shadowing the carefree flutter of snowflakes with a different and terrible reality. He had never felt the cold before though now the artic seemed warm, fresh ice glittered in his veins and no longer were his wants for the smiles of children and their cries of joy, but instead he wanted their shrieks of fear. He wanted terrible mischief. Wanted to steal their hats so that they would feel his terrific cold. He thought of the humour he would find in frosting the roads with black ice, to freezing doors closed.

He thought of the way that ice could bite deliciously into soft skin. He grinned at how terrible a nightmare that would be. He thought of a pond with thin ice and felt a thrill of fear that made him laugh and brought a new hunger to his bones, a new craving.

He shuddered, breathing out as all of this novelty became him, reaching out for the staff he had discarded, fingers curling around the smoothed surface of the wood and feeling the grounding comfort of the familiar. He used it to pull himself up from the snow, resting on it momentarily, eyes closed, savouring his brief thrill of fear as it faded away into delight at its taste.

He laughed.

"Hello Jack."

And Jack smiled back a terrible smile of sharp teeth and yellow eyes, his once snowy hair now stained with the ash of destroyed worlds.

"Wonderful night for a nightmare or two." Pitch grinned.

And Jack laughed. "Yes, it is." The sun was setting. The wind turned bitingly cold and malevolent as it tenderly picked up its snowflake boy. "Shall we go have some fun?"

* * *

The signs shone bright in the sky, the rainbow of colours that called all of the Guardians to meet. Jack looked up from where he sat on the frozen ice of his pond and smiled. Far be it for him to miss a meeting of the Guardians. He chuckled, brushing away the snow as he rose, kicking his blackened staff into his hands.

"Let's go visit!" Jack laughed as the wind picked him up and flung him through the clouds, delighting in the laugh of its snowflake boy as they headed to a familiar destination.

At the pole, the others gathered. First Tooth had arrived, then Sandy, and lastly Bunnymund. The Pooka shuddered as he made a beeline to the fire place.

"Is it just me North, or is this place colder than it was before?" He griped.

"Is not just you, Bunny." North replied, his brow furrowed in concern. Tooth shushed her fairies and turned to listen to the old Cossack. "Winter everywhere has been cold, and very bad."

Sandy nodded, and then threw up an image of Jack and a cloud, followed by a question mark.

North looked conflicted, as though he was trying hard not to believe something he knew was true. "Jack's name is back on naughty list. He is making the bad weather."

Tooth let out a quite gasp, even Bunny seemed surprised by the news. He frowned. "But that would mean Mother Nature is tellin' him that he has ta make it snow longer and harder, you know he takes his orders from her."

North shook his head. "If was part of nature, would not be on naughty list."

"Where is Jack?" Tooth said looking around. "He's normally the first here."

"I was. Though maybe you don't mean me exactly."

The four Guardians started and quickly began searching the eaves for their missing comrade. Trying to find the source of Jack Frost's disembodied voice.

"Oi!" Bunny snapped annoyed. "Quit playin' ya games and come out here, this is serious."

There was a laugh and a chill, the wind was so cold and rakish as it drew its fingertip along each of their spines. North shuddered involuntarily and Tooth's feathers twitched and puffed in uncertainty.

"Quit playin' games?" Jack mimicked back, his voice a poor imitation of the Pooka's Australian accent. "But Bunny. I'm the Guardian of fun. Does that sound like fun to you?" He laughed again.

"Jack?" Tooth called, nervously flitting around, her fairies huddling close as the room grew colder still.

"Jack?" Jack mimicked, voice laced with mirth. The wind whipped around them and in a flurry of snow Jack seemed to appear, he was standing lazily atop the apex of the globe, taking languid steps forward as it rotated. "Not quite."

Tooth's eyes grew wide as North's heart clenched and Bunny felt anger in his veins. The boy atop the globe was not Jack. Where Jack had snow white hair, this figure had the dark grey hair of snow streaked with ash. His bright blue eyes were golden, his lips now twisted in a wicked grin over snow white teeth. His once blue hoody was charcoaled with black and his staff appeared scorched beneath the frost that coated it. He was a shadow of a frost child, an image corrupted by nightmares.

"Jack?" Tooth's voice was a whisper.

Jack's grin stretched wider, more manic, his eyes filled with the delight of a cruel, perpetual joke.

"I'd prefer if you called me Blackjack." He said with a flourish and a bow, snickering to himself as he slid behind the globe.

Bunny's heart thudded uncomfortably. He felt for a moment the panic of uncertainty and fell back on his usual routine when dealing with Jack. "Ya mean like that card game?" He sniped, eyes darting around for a glimpse of the other.

There came the laugh again, chilling and humourless. "No no, you see; I never reached 21." The laugh grew loud and Bunny shuddered. "Think of it more as… the club."

Blackjack appeared from nowhere, the end of his staff thick with ice as he swung it down at Bunny's unguarded back. He was stopped mere centimetres away by a golden rope and Sandy's sad face.

Blackjack pouted. "Aww, no fun."

The wind howled and roared through the room as Blackjack flung ice at the unprepared Guardians. Bunny dodged the worst of it as Sandy pursued the corrupt frost child, his golden whips trying to catch the staff, but each time he found his sand frozen.

North had barrelled in with bare fists but it was impossible to touch the shadow boy; his fingers numbed instantly in the frozen wind and Blackjack was always dancing just out of reach. He was too big and slow for fighting Blackjack, who was nimble and small. He procured a length of wooden dowel to try and reach the boy, but he couldn't. As he was driven back, Bunny would dive in and be deflected with shields of ice. Tooth was helpless to provide assistance, fighting the wind as it tried to discard her as easily as it dispatched of snow from tree branches. Sandy faced similar difficulty, the wind tearing at his sand, weakening his already pulled punches and stopping him from snaring the boy as he danced and hurtled through the air.

"So I really was your ace in the hole." He mocked, flinging more ice at Sandman who managed to shield himself with a quick wall of sand. "Because as I see it, you can't hit me and I can't even shadow walk like Pitch, so I don't know how you'd beat him. How pitiful." He flipped backwards, coating the floor in ice and causing North to slip by him. He laughed uproariously as the large figure skidded into a wall.

"I'll tell you what, how about the wind sits this one out? Though I'm sorry, but I can't let your yeti's play. Is that fair? It'll be just us Guardians." He crowed as he cast off the wind. It twisted around the outside of them like an angry mob spoiling for the fight to continue. The yetis were unable to penetrate through the swirling sleet, kept at bay by the spinning typhoon.

Tooth had not tried to attack him and had only defended, which had been hard given how the wind had tossed her around, but even though the wind wasn't there to hinder her flying she still couldn't bring herself to attack. She deflected and dodged, she tried to distract blows from the others and provide diversion, but she did not attempt to strike him. She couldn't.

"Aww, Tooth." Blackjack goaded, sliding away from Bunny. "Don't want to take a crack at me? If you hit me in the face you might win one of these pearly whites you so love."

"You smarmy ratbag!" Bunny threw his boomerang, but it hadn't been with real force. As much as he'd said he'd hated Jack, he couldn't really hurt him. And Blackjack knew it.

He reached up and caught the boomerang, coating his hand in ice first so that it hadn't hurt too badly. Bunny stared in horror as ice quickly enclosed his prized weapon. Blackjack chided, twitching his finger back and forth. "Tch tch, you should know better than to risk this with a pulled punch. You know what happens to wood when it gets too cold."

His grin split impossibly wide at Bunny's cry of dismay as he coated the wood in a thin jacket of ice and then pelted it down at the ground. "Touchdown!" He roared, the boomerang shattering against the ground as though it had been made of porcelain.

Blackjack's laugh was caught short as Sandy's ropes wrapped around him. He had been so distracted by Bunny's anguish over his destroyed boomerang that he hadn't noticed Sandy closing in. The sand piled in around him and though he froze it he couldn't escape it. His good humour turned ill.

"Jack." North started, walking towards him.

"It's Blackjack, old man." The frost spirit bit back, his face an angry snarl.

"North, we have to do something." Tooth said, fluttering closer to North.

"You already did. Though I don't think you realize just how much."

Blackjack's grin returned. "I wondered when you'd arrive, partner."

There was a tremendous crack and the gold and ice cocoon split open. The wind rushed in, lifting its snowflake boy back and away. North made to grab for him as he flew back away to the globe but his finger only brushed the boy's feet. It was enough though, and he gave a cry at his suddenly frozen fingertips, their edges slightly blackened. He shuddered to think of what may have happened if he had managed to land a blow on him earlier.

Blackjack stood back atop the globe, grinning at them all as a figure slipped out of the shadows to stand beside him. Pitch's grin was just as wicked as he rested his hand on Blackjack's shoulder.

"You know." Pitch drawled. "It didn't take too much to turn your little Guardian into a Prince of Fear. After all, three hundred years of dark and cold would leave a stain on anyone. I really have to thank you Guardians for the neglect, it did leave such a pretty mark on him. As for you." Pitch turned his gaze to the figure at his side. "I was wondering where you'd run away to. I was hoping we could go and have some fun."

Blackjack laughed darkly at his side, nudging the taller man with his shoulder playfully, the only sign that Jack was still there. "Have you ever known me not to?" He grinned.

Pitch laughed, his terrible laugh that frightened the spiders in their webs. The Guardians all stared, frozen by horror as black began to rise around both Pitch and the shadow that was Jack. They watched in dismay as the once Guardian of Fun waved a little wave and smiled a wicked smile to them.

"Bye bye." He cooed.

The darkness swallowed them up and the Guardians felt a bitter defeat.

* * *

A/N:

"_Jack." North started, walking towards him._

"_It's Blackjack, old man." The frost spirit bit back, his face an angry snarl. "Jack Frost is my slave name, given to me by the Man, the Man in the Moon. Ungrateful bastard."_

Seems a little culturally insensitive for me to joke so but, I couldn't help it. Really I couldn't.

Anyway this is _probably_ a two parter. Can't emphasise the _probably_ here enough. I have an idea on how I'ma resolve this but for now this is what ya get.

Thanks to all the lurverly reviewers, and to jboat for the bit of prompt for this: "_jack as old man winter or general winter would be a great drabble!"_

Not quite old man winter/general winter but he's bad winter now. Might play with this some more outside of the planned two parter.

So yeah, Blackjack and a fight scene. I'm terrible with fight scenes by the way. It's just very difficult. That said I hope it wasn't too bad and I hope you liked Blackjack.

Not 100% on the name but I kinda like it, it first. Black Frost sounds a bit like black Forrest which is a delicious kind of cake, and therefore not really a great thought to have running through your brain while trying to write some twisted character type perversion of a guardian of fun. Then I though Blackice, and went… nah that's a ship name and therefore unacceptable. Dark Jack was kinda feh. So yeah, went with Blackjack.

Also for those who don't know a Blackjack is another name for a truncheon or baton Wikipedia describes it as: "_essentially a club of less than arm's length made of wood, plastic, or metal. They are carried for forced compliance and self-defence purposes by law-enforcement officers, correctional staff, security-industry employees and (less often) military personnel. Other uses for truncheons and batons include crowd control or the dispersal of belligerent or non-compliant targets._

_A truncheon or baton may be used to strike, jab, block, bludgeon and aid in the application of armlocks. Sometimes, they also are employed as weapons by criminals and other law-breakers because of their easy concealment. As a consequence, they are illegal for non-authorized civilian use in many jurisdictions around the world. They have a common role to play, too, in the rescuing of trapped individuals—for instance, people caught in blazing cars or buildings—by smashing windows or even doors."_


	8. General Nightmare

**General Nightmare**  
_Or: When plans backfire_

He wasn't sure when it had started to happen, but start it had.

Pitch began to smile.

He and the new and aptly named Blackjack spread fear everywhere they went. They haunted buildings with chills and shadows that crept and moved and slunk and had no business being there at all. They frightened movie goers on the way back to their cars, delighting in the fear that adults held as much as they did the fear of the children that they fed nightmares to. They caused mayhem wherever they went and any run-ins with the Guardians they had were extremely short lived.

With Pitch's ability to disappear and Blackjack's partnership with the wind and ice, they were hardly able to strike at them before they vanished to spread fear elsewhere. Slowly, the balance was being overturned. Bit by bit, children lost hope for the warmth of spring and the kindness of Christmas was like a faraway memory in comparison to the biting, vicious cold and terrible nightmares.

Pitch was in heaven, but something was changing. _He_ was changing.

He smiled and laughed and joked with his new companion. Blackjack was not made a fearling slave but an equal, his core of fun had been twisted to a different purpose but it was still there, and it was as infectious as a rash.

He had barely noticed it in the beginning. Beating the Guardians, seeing them struggle against the combined powers of himself and the newly appointed Blackjack had been such a thrill, he couldn't stop the delight he felt translating into a crackling laugh. He hadn't thought anything of the glee and laughter because, wasn't it right that he felt this way, seeing his enemies struggle? Wasn't it right for him to laugh in wicked glee? But that wasn't it. Or at least, that wasn't all of it, and the longer he and Blackjack hung around together spreading mayhem, mischief, and fear, the more he felt it.

Fun.

He was having fun.

Blackjack hardly left any child sobbing in fear behind him. He terrorized them by hijacking their sleds, taking them to the brink of danger and death and pain, but he never actually harmed them. He played rough and they went home with bruises sometimes, but alive and laughing from their brush with danger. Blackjack delighted in their terrified screams as they careened towards a tree, but he also delighted in their laugher when they missed it by just that much. His snowballs did not incite hate-filled violence, but the same snowball fights they always did; it was just that more people fell down, and if one or two of the snowballs exploded and scared the snot out of the kids, well, all the better. But they were never harmed.

Pitch didn't hurt kids. He terrified them. All he had ever wanted was their fear.

He had it in abundance with his nightmares now. He hardly even needed to go afield to sew more of it, but he did so regardless. He went with Blackjack, and together they scared the daylights out of many a soul walking home late at night. It was such fun.

He should've known, really. How many times had he been defeated by fun and laughter? So many times he had faltered at the brink of victory because of fun. Laughter came so freely, and he at least should've noticed the slowly dwindling level of malevolence in Blackjack's hungry gaze.

"It was easy, wasn't it?" Blackjack grinned from his perch on the armrest of Pitch's throne. They had returned to the lair, a moment of reprieve. The King of Nightmares turned from where he was overlooking the rest of his home.

"What do you mean?"

Blackjack chuckled, lazily stretching, wriggling his toes as though settling into his own skin. "Changing a Guardian to a darker purpose." He explained.

"The man in the moon made it easy." Pitch grinned back, delighting in the folly of the moon. "Leaving such a prize to decay for three hundred years without tending. Poor Jack. Even once a purpose was found, there was still so much pain in the heart. Guardian of Fun, yes; happiness, though, is no guarantee."

Blackjack's eyes slid lazily closed and he hummed low in his throat. "Yes, that's true." He barked a quick laugh, as though startled by an amusing thought. "Scars are different from wounds though, Pitchster."

Pitch's eye twitched. "Pitchster?"

He laughed some more, clutching his middle and rocking forward, delighted. "I admit, it was easy to take this in. I mean, wasn't it you who showed me that fear and fun go hand in hand?" His grin was wicked sharp, eyes sparkling in mischief.

Pitch paused.

The spritely proportioned boy leapt up, flipping smoothly through the air before coming to a rest behind Pitch, hands joined behind his back.

"I'm not all black though Pitch, I'm still part Jack." He snickered. "And my sense of fun is _fun_tastic."

He tapped his staff sharply down on the ground and a ton of snow fell from the roof, landing heavily on the King of Nightmares. Pitch gave a shocked cry as he disappeared under a cascade of white and cold. Blackjack flipped up onto the heap, freezing it slowly solid.

Pitch roared angrily as the ice solidified around him. "What are you doing?!" He spat.

Blackjack chuckled. "Having a little fun."

"What?"

"I'm not sure if you knew about this little trick, but I, uh, incite fun. So I thought to myself, if my centre of fun is changed by your fear, it should work the other way around, right?" He laughed, his grin a vicious joy, his eyes bright with potential victory. Pitch felt fear.

"I mean, if you can turn me so easy, turning you shouldn't be so hard."

Pitch's chest constricted. "It won't work."

Blackjack laughed. "Won't it? I thought I'd already had some success, given how much you've been laughing recently." He gathered a ball of snow into his hand, blowing on it softly until it glowed bright with a blue magic, winter magic.

"You were already tainted when I changed you, thanks to the man in the moon and those weirdoes." Pitch explained quickly, gathering together nightmares to break him out of the snow and ice.

Blackjack knew from the tiny cry in his heart that Pitch was correct. He was winter's chill, and while he had brought fun, he also brought the cold and snow that caused hunger and sometimes death. He had never been overly bitter about it, had accepted nature as nature. He knew the aching loneliness in his heart from three hundred years alone. Those had been Pitch's weapons, but he knew Pitch suffered them too, and in his twisted mind, if they were so similar in these regards, turning Pitch into someone more fun would be just as easy as it had been for Pitch to shade Jack.

He crouched down, bringing his face close to Pitch, his ice breath fanning over the grey skin, eyes glinting. "Can't hurt to try."

Then it began. Snowball after snowball. Pitch was panicking, the cold and the shadows became menacing. He laughed without reason or thought, and his soul was lifted and filling with slow joy. The shadows began to slip away from his fingertips, slowly, slowly dripping away. His heart was bursting with good humour, a feeling not meant for a home so dark, and the fearlings in his soul waned.

He laughed and laughed and Blackjack laughed with him, delighting in the carrying out of his mischievous plan. This was dangerous. There was too much laughter. Fear and fun made good neighbours but were ill-suited housemates. The darkness began to withdraw too far from him.

Pitch laughed but it hurt, gods above did it hurt. His eyes watered as he weakened, crying out in pain, his anguished cries dissolving into laughter as another snowball struck him. His skin felt the cold and his cheeks began to redden, his dark cloak became gently embroidered with gold and silver. The general was returning.

This had an unforeseen consequence for Blackjack. As the last of Pitch's power faded, the shadows that had clung so desperately to Jack fell away with a sudden painful rush, no longer certain of their purpose and desperate to return to their weakening master.

He fell to his knees, fingers twitching around his staff, breathing laboured as he struggled to regain awareness of himself.

The laughing ended.

"What have you _done?_" A voice seethed. Jack turned, staring into the handsome face of Kozmotis Pitchiner.

"P-Pitch?" Jack launched backwards, startled by the golden warrior.

"Let me out _right now_!"

Jack glanced at his hands and his hair, looking for the unhealthy grey that had overtaken him but it was gone. He had done it. He was back to being Jack! Pitch hadn't counted on Jack's own loneliness and desire. Desire for someone in this world to be like him. He hadn't considered that, while he was corrupted, he would seek to change another.

His head spun with familiar thoughts again, his heart so much lighter. Where was he, though? Underground with Pitch? With Pitch. He glanced back towards the strange figure in the ice.

"You have to let me out."

Jack blinked. He calmed. Then he angered. "Why should I? After what you did to me, I should leave you there."

"Jack." The new man levelled the frost child with a steady gaze. Gone was the malice, though the stare was hard. Pitch was no longer as he was, but he was not Pitchiner either. This was a new Pitch born of a maddening darkness, a thousand years of terror, and the sweet, sad heart of a loving father who had lost a daughter. The shadows that plagued him were his own now.

Jack twitched back and forth, conflicted. He wanted to go, oh did he want to go. He wanted to fly away as fast as he could. The wind plucked at his clothes, ready to whisk him away at a moment's notice, but there was something new caught in the ice. This was no longer a nightmare king; this was a broken general of the stars. This was new. He still had the scent of shadows around him, and in time his nightmares would return to cling to him, but for now they had been frightened away by his laughter.

"Who are you?"

"Pitch, maybe."

"Maybe?"

"I'm not sure. I'm so tired." He closed his eyes and sighed, a bone-deep ache of a sigh.

Jack drew cautiously closer. "Why?"

"I'm too old." He tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling with unseeing eyes. "Too afraid. Too weak. I wasn't always, but I am now. I thought to see my Seraphina; I was always weak to that."

"Who is-?"

"A nightmare." Jack made an unconvinced noise in the back of his throat. Free from the dark that had consumed him, what would a general be afraid of?

"Let me free Jack. I can't breathe in this ice." He breathed, sliding his gaze lazily to the frost child.

Jack eyed him distrustfully. "How do I know this isn't a trick?"

"It is."

Jack frowned, unsure. He felt something stir in his awareness, at the very back of his mind, abrasive as black sand chaffing his skin. Something wasn't right. He glanced around the dark but the shadows were not so black as they once were, not so filled with swarming masses of fearlings and shadow men. Gone were the nightmares, but if they were not here…

"You can feel it as well as I. Even free from them, you feel it. They are free to do as they will, but they have none. They are mindless creatures, terrible and mindless. Let me free Jack."

He shuddered, fingers tightening on his staff. "Will you change me back?" He focused his gaze on the contained figure, realizing now that his ice's faint glow was stopping shadows from returning to Pitch, as they had no means to reach him, no path that wasn't lit.

"No, I think I've learned my mistake."

"Who are you?"

"I'm not Pitch, I'm not Pitchiner. I'm neither and both. I don't know." He let out a suffered breath. "I am tired. Give me back my shadows." His eyes were stern.

"Promise you won't attack me or my friends again." Jack levelled his staff to Pitch's face. The aquiline face contorted into an amused grimace.

"I cannot promise that. I will not promise that."

Jack shook his head. "Then I cannot let you free."

The calm features twisted to rage and he snarled at the frost child, the shadows swirling and bubbling and that little presence in the back of Jacks' mind telling him that the Nightmare King was furious. "You will let me have them back!"

"No!" The wind snatched its frost child up and away, feeling his turmoil and sensing his fear.

"I may not have the talent to know at the moment, but I can tell that you're afraid." Pitch crooned. "The guardians are so foolhardy. To deny me strength and to deny me belief, and expect no retaliation? I cannot promise not to seek revenge for my pain."

Jack paused. He hadn't considered, not once. He had seen the look on Pitch's face when a child ran through him, seen the horror and pain. Hadn't Pitch himself been dragged away by fears and nightmares when children stopped believing in him? He raised a hand to his chest. His heart was heavy with empathy and grief.

"Spirit of Winter, Guardian of Fun. I once showed you the necessity for fear, but your beloved Guardians do not understand it, cannot completely comprehend the truth of it whilst they are so afraid of fear. They proclaim to always fight fear, so I shall fight _for_ fear. It is all I can do." And once again the general returned, noble heart on his sleeve, suffering for the good of all. His mood swung back and forth as a pendulum in a clock, alternating between the calculating hatred of Pitch, and the noble intentions of Pitchiner.

Jack hesitated. It's true that once Pitch had shown him that fear was needed, he had even trusted the Nightmare King just the tiniest increment, but then he changed again. Pitch had attacked him! Changed him! Distorted him as the general had once been. But he'd kept his centre, he'd kept fun at his core despite what he became; the same could not be said for the mad creature that Pitch had become after being left alone with the whispering darkness.

"I'm so tired."

He couldn't hate Pitch for his nature, as he had learned not to hate himself for the cold winds that followed in his wake. He did not feel pity, he felt sorrow and pain. Pitch had been condemned long ago, stranded on a lonely planet, cast out, and hated with only shadows to speak to.

"At least give me your word that you will not try to make me one of your underlings again."

Pitch barked a laugh that turned pained. "I will not make that mistake again. When you join my side next time, you will be willing."

Jack grimaced as he drifted back down to stand on the ice before Pitch. "Unlikely."

He took a deep breath, steadying himself for his choice. He couldn't let the fearlings be free, which meant he couldn't let Pitchiner be free of them. He sighed and condemned a madman to return to his fate. He brought down his staff with a mighty crack, shearing the ice in half and fading the glow that it held. He hadn't been prepared for the ravenous shadows that immediately lunged back for their master. He gave a cry of alarm as black sand and shadow fingers rushed in to smother the suddenly terrified and yet triumphant face of Pitch beneath a cacophony of nightmares and fears.

The wind was quick to snatch him away, though Jack couldn't tear his eyes away from the shuddering, writhing mass that was Pitch Black. There were a thousand terrified cries, all quiet in comparison to the gut-wrenching, terror-filled screams of the Nightmare King.

Jack fled the tunnels. Any thoughts of revenge he had left had been frightened away by the cries of the distorted man he left behind.

* * *

A/N: Argh, so unhappy, but Penspot, did you see that coming?!


	9. Coming Back

**Coming Back**  
_Or: Facing up to the expectations of others_

Looking back he didn't really feel any remorse. He remembered clearly the joy, deep pleasure and satisfaction of frightening people on the streets, of reigning victorious over the other Guardians. His chest stirred as though something was telling him to feel awful and feel guilty about the things he had done under the influence of Pitch's darkness.

But he didn't.

He felt strange and disconnected from the person who had done those things. It didn't feel like he had done any of those things for all that he could remember his limbs going through the motions. Why should he feel guilty for another's misdeeds? He had hardly just let them happen, he wasn't there for them; he was in the centre of them, the dark and lost of them. It wasn't him.

The one thing he felt sad about when recalling his time as Blackjack (he thinks that as though it were time spent in gaol) was Bunny's boomerang. It had been utterly destroyed. It was that which stopped him from flying immediately to the Guardians, that and the numerous bruises, cuts, and abrasions he'd gifted them. Though it wasn't truly him, it was another in his place, wearing his face and using his voice. It wasn't Jack. Would they realise that when he came to call?

The wind plucked his sleeves and tussled his hair to try and soothe his anxiety. Jack sighed, smiling a little at the mothering he received from the wind. It didn't concern itself with good or bad, right and wrong. The wind would just as soon gust someone off a cliff or a ship into a stony shore as it would expedite their journey home, or knock a ball from the branches of a tree into the waiting arms of its owner. For the wind there was no right or wrong, there was movement and stillness, sound and silence. It couldn't really understand the dilemma that Jack struggled with. It tried. It failed. So instead it sought to soothe. It puffed up his hoody playfully to distract him, tried to get his hair to reach his nose and tickle it, but nothing would distract from the thoughts and purpose that Jack had set himself on. He knew he had to do.

The Guardians had taken to meeting often at North's to strategize ways in which to get Jack back from Pitch, to organise attacks and share information. There was a good chance they would be there now.

His fingers twitched against his staff, he had never been one for confronting others, for shouldering the responsibility to return somewhere he didn't wish to go. He could barely stand to think of the looks on their faces, the pain and disappointment they must feel, the horror at his atrocities. How would they feel if they knew he felt no horror in recalling them? How would they react to knowing that he could feel the barest hint of a shadow in his mind telling him that the nightmares hadn't left Pitch's lair in days. It was an advantage to them, strategically speaking, that he could feel the nightmare sand and shadows as a very vague sensory perception, lurking in the recesses of his mind, just slightly out of reach. But it meant they were still there. There was still a tiny piece of Pitch Black in his mind.

He had to go though. They were his family. He had fought them. They worried. They didn't know he was okay again. Was he okay again? He felt it. Felt it in the soft snow that fell and the playful wind that huffed impatiently, desperately wanting to throw him through the sky. He was Jack. He was fine. Really. He was.

He took a deep breath, tightening his grip on his old companion as his faithful carer prepared to lift him away. "Alright, let's go."

* * *

"It's been over two months now, what if we can't-"

"No!" North barked, interrupting Tooth's doubts. "We can change him back. Next time we do not hold back. I know is hard to do, sometimes he still looks like Jack." A sigh, a frown, a hand rubbing at his aching head. "We must subdue him, bring him back to pole."

Tooth clasped her hands in front of her chest, flitting nervously as she attempted to strengthen her resolve. "I don't know that I can." She whispered.

Surprisingly it was Bunny who moved to her, clasping her hands between his soft paws. "Trust me, as much as the Snowflake gets on my nerves, I don't want to hurt him either." He said, voice rumbling softly. "But we don't have many options left and I'm not leaving him to Pitch."

North nodded approvingly, folding his arms across his chest. "So how do we do this? Sandy cannot make him sleep with dream sand, they become nightmares." He frowned.

Sandy quickly made figure of Blackjack, then showed the same image but he was missing his shepherds crook. Bunny nodded. "Aye, remember during that fight with Pitch? He couldn't fly once he lost it. That would help a lot, he and the wind are too much to take on together."

North grimaced. "So we get staff, then Sandy, Tooth and I will distract him and Pitch while Bunny you knock him out and take him down tunnel."

They all agreed, reluctantly. "So do we just wait for them to surface again?" Tooth asked hesitantly, wringing her hands, feathers twitching.

"No other choice." Bunny shrugged, meandering over to the globe. The lights were still shining not so many as their once was now that Blackjack and Pitch were working their terrors on the children.

Tooth fluttered over to join him, looking at the lights. They had stopped flickering out so fast now, in fact, she frowned. They had stopped flickering out altogether.

"Sandy! North!"

"What is it?" North ambled over.

"The lights." She whispered excitedly.

"What about them?" Bunny asked, cocking his head to the side as he scrutinised the globe more carefully.

"They've stopped going out!"

"T-They have too!" Bunny exclaimed, before calming himself. "This might just mean they're taking a break or something, or planning something more devious."

"Yes but it change in pattern!" North said excitedly. "Maybe…"

They began to speculate on what it could mean. The lights still on, not growing or decreasing. Sandy watched silently, it was often hard to get his opinion in but he didn't mind. He enjoyed watching the banter between the three, North and Bunny's rivalry set aside, Tooth carefully and quickly interjecting her ideas.

Then they started to argue.

Sandy rolled his eyes, turning away from the globe, was that a breeze from somewhere? He looked towards the large arching windows, eyes scouring the wooden frame. Were Pitch and Blackjack going to attack them here? Was that the reason for the change?

He slowly moved closer to the window, peering cautiously around its corners for any hidden danger. Then he saw it, or rather him. A face slowly alighting up from the edge of the window, nervously peering into the room. His hair a perfect snowy white, his eyes bright blue and anxious. They widened in shock when he caught Sandy looking at him before the corner of his mouth twitched up in an awkward smile and he gave a tiny wave, his expression cautiously optimistic like a teenager that had been caught out after curfew.

Sandy felt his heart swell in joy to a degree where he almost opened his mouth to shout his happiness to the room. As it was his lips split into a grin so wide it almost hurt and he flew break neck to the window, throwing it open and scooping Jack in. And it was Jack. Everything about him was Jack. The wind was so light and playful, his hair so white, eyes so innocent and so _Jack_ and so _not_ Blackjack.

He wrapped his arms around the frost child, heart pounding in happiness. He felt Jack stiffen uncomfortably in his arms before relaxing an iota to wrap his arms around the giver of dreams in a gentle hug.

"Hi Sandy." Jack whispered. Sandy tightened his grip.

"J-Jack?" Soon more arms, first Tooth then Bunny and finally North's all-encompassing limbs.

"Oh Jack you're back." Tooth said, voice thick with relief and joy.

Parting was awkward, as one by one they let him go, happy and confused. Next came a barrage of questions.

"How did you escape?"

"Are you alright?"

"Where is Pitch?"

"What happened?"

"How did he get you in the first place mate?"

They fell like an avalanche on Jack, even Sandy was firing off symbols and question marks. He put his hands up defensively as though trying to halt a physical assault, heart hammering as they quieted. After so long craving to be seen, to suddenly be under such scrutiny made him quail a little, his resolve flickering like a candle caught in a breeze. He wanted to flee. But he owed them. Owed them a tale of a Nightmare King and his Prince, of a General of Nightmares with a sad and tired face. He owed them apologies and explanations. He felt he most owed these to Bunny whom he had taken physically from whilst he was Blackjack.

They looked at him expectantly, as he gripped his staff and strengthened his resolve. "I was watching the sunset in the Arctic when he got me. He surprised me, I didn't notice what was happening until I was too slow to stop it."

And so he told them a tale of a Blackjack and Pitch Black; told them of the disconnect between who he was and what he was doing. He didn't tell him his lack of remorse and he defended his position on giving the not-Pitch back his shadows and nightmares. He owed them a lot, he owed them as close to the truth as he dared, but something in the shadowy areas of his heart, where the loneliness had receded to, felt that the shadows trapped in his mind were something unforgiveable. That not immediately seeking away to get them out was unforgivable.

So he didn't tell them.

Maybe he'd tell them when Pitch stirred again.

Maybe he'd tell them then.

Maybe.

* * *

A/N: And pretty sure that that is the end of that little saga. I apologise (I'm not really sorry) about the word gaol - you may know it as JAIL but my spell checker is okay with my Australian English word for it so :P


End file.
